The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Writing Smoothes Over the Rough Spots
Review: Daniel Mendelsohn is a beautiful writer and the Elusive Embrace is quite lyrical at times as it looks at desire and the riddle of identity. His memoir flits from his Jewish childhood, family history, gay New York (actually only Chelsea, actually only one avenue in Chelsea), Greek language and literature, and beautiful (mostly now dead) Southern boys. He is building a mythology of himself and the process is wonderful to go through even when the creation of said mythos requires the narrowing of his vision. He is blissfully unaware of gay men outside of Chelsea and the fever dreams of his Southern past, partly because many of these men would not fit his defintion as "boys" and quite likely fall outside his radar. But that is understandable in a memoir such as this when the point is to write what you see and not what remains invisible to you. Also I was less than thrilled with the chapter on being a surrogate father (gay men as the new spinster aunts?) but even here the writing carried me along. As did the references to Greek myths that connected and substantiated all the ideas. These were evocative and necessary to the entire book. A well written look at myth making on a personal level that is worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Writing Smoothes Over the Rough Spots
Review: Daniel Mendelsohn is a beautiful writer and the Elusive Embrace is quite lyrical at times as it looks at desire and the riddle of identity. His memoir flits from his Jewish childhood, family history, gay New York (actually only Chelsea, actually only one avenue in Chelsea), Greek language and literature, and beautiful (mostly now dead) Southern boys. He is building a mythology of himself and the process is wonderful to go through even when the creation of said mythos requires the narrowing of his vision. He is blissfully unaware of gay men outside of Chelsea and the fever dreams of his Southern past, partly because many of these men would not fit his defintion as "boys" and quite likely fall outside his radar. But that is understandable in a memoir such as this when the point is to write what you see and not what remains invisible to you. Also I was less than thrilled with the chapter on being a surrogate father (gay men as the new spinster aunts?) but even here the writing carried me along. As did the references to Greek myths that connected and substantiated all the ideas. These were evocative and necessary to the entire book. A well written look at myth making on a personal level that is worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: breathtaking, brilliant, poignant, lovely
Review: I came to this book late, after reading that remarkable essay by the author in the NY Times Magazine. I can't believe I spent years without this book in my life, on my shelf, in my heart. I will reread it again and again.

Never have I finished a book and felt this same sensation -- I'm smarter for having read it, I'm more empathic, I'm more sensitive, I know more. I'm probably deluding myself, and it's just proximity to Mr. Mendelsohn's genius that is making me feel this way, but somehow I feel like a tiny bit of it has rubbed off on me.

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

Rating:
Summary: EXTRAORDINARY EXPLORATION OF HUMANITY
Review: I will get straight to the point and say that I hated this book. Did the author simply want to justify his own infantile outlook on life by writing what amounts to erudite "lyrical" prose defending irresponsible selfish behavior? Perhaps he wanted to exorcise the collective demons of the gay community (the book seems saturated with guilt)and defend men that behave similarly. It bothers me that the author cleverly manipulates a text that is never quite an autobiography nor a political manifesto, musing on important political topics and always relating them to lust ("desire") in a manner that must appeal only to his own vanity. This book is a complete step backward in the gay movement as it never talks about how things should be but only justifies the way things are by mainly citing ancient texts and casual examples from the author's life in New York City. His chapter on "Multiplicities" promotes promiscuity as an integral part of healthy relationships and proports that all the "successful" gay couples he knows (I guess those are the ones that vacation together and have dinner parties) are unfaithful to one another. When a trick has chicken pox, he rambles on about the dangers of "multiplicities" when the word that he is using really only means "being a whore". This book seems more like a cultured version of the idle chatter promiscuous gay men have with their gay friends (when their boyfriends are not around): a series of useless erotic anecdotes through which the author tries to form a pact with his gay readers to always remain boys, like the disciples of Peter Pan.

Rating:
Summary: Dull and Pretentious
Review: I'm always reluctant to write a nasty review as the reviewed book usually represents years of work for the author, but after suffering through this book I feel little sympathy. Mr. Mendelsohn wears his learning heavily and forces the weight on his innocent readers. The result is a bit like being forced to listen to the nasal blatherings of NPR's Michael Silverblatt for hours on end. Tedious, precious, and ultimately pointless, find a better use for your time.

Rating:
Summary: Chelsea Queenery to the Max
Review: If you're a navel gazing, self-obsessed posey aesthete who praises himself under the umbrealla of supposed 'self-exploration' then maybe this book is for you... a really egregious book. Shouldn't have been written. Or at least published....

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully wrought, intricately thought.
Review: Perhaps the best thing I can say about this gorgeous and provocative book is that the author has crafted such movingly expressive arguments for his beliefs that even when I disagreed with those beliefs (for instance, his sense that sexual fidelity is fundamentally unnatural for men and certainly not worth making any personal sacrifices to maintain), I found myself taking a moment to question myself because I was so seduced by the beauty of his writing style that I almost felt compelled to agree with his content. This is a challenging work of art that, in the end, is less a broad social argument than one man's highly personal search for meaning in his own life.

Rating:
Summary: Well Written But Was It Worth It?
Review: The Elusive Embrace was well written but was it worth it? This is a memory piece by a fortyish gay male who interweaves his Jewish family's history, his sexual life in New York's Chelsea district, his reminiscences of sexual coming-of-age as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia (the least graphic, and probably the most beautiful and evocative prose), and Greek mythology, at which, as a classics prof, he is expert (useful, but pedantic).

Having achieved a sort of stellar lifestyle compromise--lectureship at Princeton, sexual freedom in Manhattan, and a close relationship mentoring a baby to whom he is almost but not quite a father figure--we wonder why Mendelsohn felt compelled to write about it.

As the song goes, the author is "his own special creation." I guess all gay men are. I have a feeling, though, that Mendelsohn's life story was highly edited to make it more acceptable to a gay readership. We don't hear about what it's like teaching at an Ivy League school, and only passing reference is made to the author's heterosexual experience, or to his life as a graduate student. His life emerges as a coherent work with an awful lot of thimble-rigging, string-pulling and myth-quoting--more than would have been necessary in a more straightforward account. I agree with the earlier reviewer who said the author bit off more than he could chew. Beautifully written, but not too satisfying.